


Hands

by Sab



Category: MASH
Genre: Drabble, Gen, been remixed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-03-01
Updated: 2000-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-02 08:42:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sab/pseuds/Sab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like Lady Macbeth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hands

His hands were raw from scrubbing. His cuticles frayed, his nails oxidized with white half-moons from malnutrition, crinkled and peeling from his fingers like claws. He tried borrowing Charles' strange, fragranced soap, but the smell was tell-tale and the lather just dried him out. He stuck with petroleum jelly, a tub hidden in his footlocker and he'd nurse his knuckles each night, but it didn't help.

Some days he'd scrub in fifty, sixty times in twelve hours, slip in to suffocating rubber and drying talc, dig his hands deep into some kid's gut and come out in the middle of the night to see red fingers, chafed and cracked, wrapped around the stem of a martini glass.

It was like Lady Macbeth, but he'd been here a year and his hands would never be the same. He hated them; he didn't want to look, didn't want to see the gnarled creature Korea had made him, scarlet and arthritic and calloused.

And at night, wrapped around that martini he'd think of his hands and imagine the day he'd get to go home, the first time he'd kiss Peg, the first time he'd reach out to take Erin in his arms. And it always winds up the same.

Erin takes one look at those hands and screams. Daddy went to Korea a man, but he came home a monster.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [His Hands (Returning Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/64580) by [sophinisba](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophinisba/pseuds/sophinisba)




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